Leaving Word. Steven Boykey Sidley
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entrapped and encumbered. Not a bad concept. She doubted he had shot a single frame or spun even a thread of narrative purpose. She could have offered to help him, but his politics distressed her. She once asked him whether he was a Republican or Democrat. His answer was that voting was not his thing. That did it. An ordinary man. Humdrum. At best. But inoffensive, in a tolerable sort of way.
Karina paid for coffee. Kissed her on the crown of her head.
‘Everything will be OK,’ she said, helplessly.
Joelle trudged heavily back to her office. She still had work to do. Without that, she would tumble headfirst into a pack of black dogs.
Chapter 3
Dear James,
Thank you very much for submitting your manuscript for consideration. While we found your writing energetic and ambitious and the story of the vegetarian butcher amusing, we regret to inform you that it not right for our list, but urge you to continue seeking a publisher—we are confident that your novel will find a home. We wish you the best of luck as you pursue your literary career.
Also, we would like you to know that good writing and story telling require a host of talents and crafts, which are not much on display here. Perhaps you might reconsider your aspirations to be a part of this mercurial business, which will likely bring you a tsunami of endless disappointment.
Best
Madame Defarge Joelle Jesson
Executive Editor
CrossMedia Publishing
Joelle thought briefly of emailing this to her literary colleagues for a cheap giggle, but then decided that even second-hand snark was likely to be returned with some sort of terrible stinging karmic rebound. Which had already happened, of course, now that she had been fired or downsized or retrenched or whatever they called it and was working out her last month of employment. So she deleted the email and duly sent a brief but polite rejection to James’s agent, whom she had never met.
She felt like an oncologist. A skilled dispenser of terrible news. Her rejection of James’s novel (of which she had read little more than the synopsis and three chapters before throwing in the towel) would not be, she knew, a trifling matter for him. He had at some point set out to write a novel. It requires little talent to have the aspiration, which is always accompanied by sparkling dreams of fulfillment or fame or money or sex or whatever affirmations and validations color our dreams. It takes great discipline to actually write a novel. But to write one good enough for publication, well, the odds were long. James would receive the bad news with sharp pain, or perhaps numbness, if this disappointment was one of many. James would rail against the stupidity of editors, or the crassness of commercialism, or the dumbing down of America, or the cruelty of fate. It made little difference. James’s day and perhaps his week and perhaps his life would be ruined by her email. She tried not to think too much on it. It was territory in which she had landed after her master’s in Contemporary American Letters and her early and lucky break into the business. Ruining dreamers’ lives was part of the job.
Much more rarely she would write an email that would contain the phrase ‘we are pleased’. She would revel in the joy that this was certain to bring. She would wait for the excited return email or call. And then she felt like an oncologist with the negative biopsy in her pocket. Akin to God. OK, maybe not a good analogy, oncologist, given her ex-husband and his testicle, but surely she had ruined some lives and re-animated some others.
‘Oh my god,’ she had said weakly when Blane had told her he had cancer some ten years earlier. They had had a young early-twenties marriage long ago that ended as unsubstantially and dispassionately as it had begun, without acrimony, and with the mutual admission that there was more life to be lived in wider and separate worlds. They had remained in touch, and she still loved him dearly in ways that were uncomplicated by sex and passion.
‘What kind?’
‘Testicular.’
There was a long silence. She wasn’t sure how to process this. It felt like too intimate a confession.
So she said, ‘Oh, Blane. Oh my god.’ Again.
‘It’s cool,’ he shushed. ‘They’re just going to lop it off. Then I’ll be good to go.’
Lop it off? There was no light side to cancer. ‘Oh my god!’
‘Also, I thought you should know. I’m gay. I’ve come out.’
Another long silence. Again she couldn’t articulate an appropriate response. Although she wondered what he was really moaning about in bed all those years ago, and now was not the time to ask.
This was ten years ago. Now he was dying. Cancer again. This time everywhere. She really shouldn’t compare her rejection letters to oncologist news. She called him from her office, where she was staring uncomprehendingly at manuscripts piled on her desk.
‘Blane. It’s me.’
‘Joelle, to what do I owe?’
‘Thinking about you, is all.’
‘Think fast. There will soon be no more me.’
‘Don’t be dramatic.’
‘Don’t be unrealistic.’
‘I’m not. I know you’re dying. It upsets me, OK? You in any pain?’
‘When we were married, was I a good fuck?’
‘Actually, you were. You didn’t answer the question.’
‘Good. I like to think I am—was—a good fuck on both sides of the aisle. Would like to leave something of value behind. No, not pain. More, um, an emptying.’
‘Is anybody there to support you?’ Blane lived in Cape Town, having been seduced on a vacation by a fine mountain and beautiful sallow boys with tattoos and violence in their smiles.
‘Yes. Plenty. Too many. And it’s midnight. D’you not understand time zones?’
‘Shit, sorry.’
‘So what’s new in New York?’
‘I live in LA now. Remember? I got fired.’
‘Oh, right. LA. Really? Fired? What-what?’
‘Wouldn’t fuck the boss, or I think that’s why.’
‘I thought you liked him. Didn’t he have a stupid name?’
‘I did. Still do. He didn’t try hard enough. Buddy, his name. What were his parents thinking?’
‘So sue. And, yes, Buddy is a stupid name.’
‘Nah, book publishing is dying. No one reads books anymore. He had to get rid of me somehow.’
‘I am dying and I read books.’
‘What are you reading?’
‘Books about dying. What are you going to do?’
‘Kill someone.’
‘Too obvious. Wait, who?’
‘The next person I see. Will you call me if you get scared?’
‘That’s funny.’
‘How so?’
‘I got scared when they told me. Now, well, not fear, more sort of anticipation. Maybe there is a God after all. And I get to hang out at his place.’
‘Bible has you going to the other place, sinner.’
‘Bible is horseshit. And I deserve a break.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘OK, Joelle. You OK?’
‘I’m unemployed, but at least I’m not dying.’
‘Funny.’
‘Thanks.